All posts tagged Roma

The European Union Friday cited modest progress in the living conditions of Roma throughout the continent, but a much-anticipated report overall painted a continued bleak picture for Europe’s largest minority.

European Commissioners Viviane Reding and Laszlo Andor released the first assessment of member states’ efforts since the EU directed countries in 2011 to adopt Roma “action plans.”

“We have seen many small miracles,” Ms. Reding said, citing an increase in early childhood education in particular, at an EU summit on the Roma. “If you add up the small miracles, you have some real change.” Read More »

A new study of democracy in the European Union labels Greece and Hungary the most worrisome “backsliders” on democratic values, but also urges special attention to Bulgaria, Romania, Spain and Italy.

The report, conducted by the Demos think tank for the European Parliament’s Socialists and Democrats group, says the current financial crisis has heightened antidemocratic trends, but that this isn’t the sole factor.

The EU should embrace its role as a watchdog of democracy, the paper says, and not see itself as solely an economic bloc. The report cites five major areas of democratic “backsliding.” Read More »

The European Commission is slamming European Union member states for failing to adequately help the Roma and is arguing for a new urgency in improving the lives of Europe’s largest minority.

In a report issued Wednesday on EU nations’ Roma policies, the commission, the EU’s executive body, said countries “must do more to combat stereotyping and deal with racist or otherwise stigmatizing language or behavior.”

The report focused not only on overt discrimination against the roughly 11 million Roma but also on what the commission sees as insufficient action to provide them with access to jobs, housing, health and education. Read More »

Over the weekend, another kerfuffle: A French senator in Mr. Sarkozy’s party told a radio program on Saturday, in reference to Mrs. Reding, that he “would have preferred that Napoléon III and Bismarck had a discussion that led to a different result, and that Luxembourg didn’t exist at all.”

On the podium of a post-summit press briefing yesterday, Mr. Sarkozy worked himself up into a fit of Gallic pique. “I am the head of the French state,” he said. “I cannot let it be insulted.”

As we described in today’s paper, Mr. Sarkozy covered pretty much all the bases. The comments were “hurtful,” “deplorable,” “shameful,” “gravely injurious,” “profoundly shocking,” and “outrageous,” he said. Plus, “an injury, a wound, a humiliation.”

Mrs. Reding backed down from her World War II analogy, but Mr. Sarkozy’s bombast put his much-derided deportation program back on Europe’s front pages for yet another day.

The Roma issue is creeping into today’s EU summit, which is supposed to be about foreign policy.

French officials have lined up to denounce Mrs. Reding’s denunciation. They’ve directed their ire at her remark that forced removal on the basis of ethnicity “is a situation I would have thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War.”

“Vice President Reding took her position yesterday after consultations with me and my full support,” he said. (Mrs. Reding said the removals were a “disgrace” and alluded to the Nazis’ deportations of Jews and Gypsies to concentration camps.)

Just yesterday, Vice President Viviane Reding, the justice commissioner, delivered a strong and spirited condemnation of France’s Gypsy-deportation campaign.

Today, the spokeswoman for José Manuel Barroso, the commission’s president, refused repeatedly to say whether Mr. Barroso shared Mrs. Reding’s views, whether Mr. Barroso had any thoughts at all on the situation in France, or even whether Mr. Barroso knew what Mrs. Reding was going to say before she said it.

The stonewalling reflects the political delicacy of the issue. Various French officials have reacted with horreur. (“This is not how you speak to a major power like France, which is the mother of human rights,” France’s Europe minister said on Radio France.)

But the silence is also a bewildering move for Mr. Barroso, who has taken pains to appear more presidential. None of the possibilities it presents is flattering. Either he lacks Mrs. Reding’s backbone on tough issues, or he lacks control of his commissioners, or–worst of all–he doesn’t know what they are doing.

Last we checked in on the European Commission’s response to France’s deportation of hundreds of Gypsies, Commissioner Viviane Reding was “following with great attention and some concern” the developments.

We’re passed the “some concern” stage.

This afternoon, Mrs. Reding lit into France with a vehemence uncharacteristic of Brussels’s staid corridors. “I personally have been appalled” by the apparent singling out of Gypsies (also known as Roma), she said. “This is a situation I would have thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War.”

She said she believed the commission would have “no choice but to institute infringement proceedings against France” for violation of EU anti-discrimination laws. She said the legal moves would be fast-tracked.

“This is not a minor offense,” Mrs. Reding said. “This is a disgrace.”

France’s very public push to deport Gypsies (also known as Roma) has drawn swift criticism from human-rights groups. The commission, which is supposed to guard the principle of free movement of people within the EU, doesn’t seem to know where it stands.

It’s a classic case of tension between a member country’s authority and the EU’s. Countries handle their own internal affairs and police their own territories. The EU has the authority to ensure those efforts don’t impinge on community rights–such as the ability of an EU citizen to live in another member state.

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The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.